by Wild, Nikki
A bullet laced the air beside my ear, and Boon released a guttural cry, but I couldn’t spare a second to look back and check on him. The last thing I saw before we rounded the corner was my old man, staggering from the front door he’d obliterated, and falling to his knees.
Now, I felt all the rage in my body collect in my heart.
These motherfuckers were going to pay.
Maybe I’d sworn to protect them. Maybe I’d rode and drank and swore and fought beside them. But my father had fallen, and they were going to pay.
One man stood in the kitchen window, a rifle aimed out into our backyard. Creeping up, staying pressed to the shingles and out of his view, we watched the rifle’s barrel move back and forth. Who had they put there, safely away from the worst of the shootout?
Soldier’s face looked comically surprised before my bullet hit him between the eyes and jerked his body backwards. His finger pulled the trigger, firing wildly into the sky. The window was clear; we lit our rags and threw them into the kitchen, one by one, hearing the crash of glass and feeling the heat blasted from the windows.
Something inside the clubhouse boomed, and my ears rang, the world suddenly hushed and muffled. Blade was shouting again, and waving his hands, rushing us back towards the trees; now, we pulled our guns, and shot against the clubhouse while we ran. Blade’s call for retreat reached the old guard, and one by one they began to file back, running with their guns still firing, towards safety. Flames licked at the corners of the windows. I watched Fleet and Mack dragging Porky between them, Mack still firing with one hand. And in the distance, another wave of engines, the Blackhawks coming in to finish the job.
Dutch was the first man out of the house, and believe me when I say that every single one of us aimed right at him and shot. But providence or the devil wanted Dutch to live a while yet, and he ducked and rolled himself to safety, firing back at us blindly while the rest of his recruits spilled forth. The Blackhawks appeared en masse, blazing onto the scene, a cavalry. We were all safely behind the tree cover now; all except Grinder, who lay at the mouth of the fire, his body a stumbling block for the boys fleeing their burning barracks.
And one by one, they fell or flew; they made it to their bikes, or they didn’t. The Blackhawks were more than merciless, firing on anything that moved; half their crew kept riding, chasing down the ones who were trying to get away. The rest lined up on the street, gunning down the men I’d once called brothers, one by one. Prospects and patched members alike. I felt sick to my stomach, heaved, but nothing came out.
Most of us had turned away by then, unable to watch our clubhouse burn, our men shot down like deer in hunting season. But Blade and I, we kept watching. It felt like our duty, our penance. We would bear witness to this, so we could tell the story and be sure it never happened again. We owed it to these men, misled and paying the highest price for it. We owed it to Grinder, and (I suspected) Hunter. I wondered if I’d ever stop being sick. It didn’t seem likely.
The gunfire slowed as Dutch’s crew either escaped on their bikes or crumpled on the pavement. Smoke rose like a sentinel into the sky, the smell of it starting to drift our way. Soon enough, the tree cover wouldn’t be safe anymore. Already, the parking lot was covered in ash and smoke, and the heat was only beginning to build.
If any of the bikes in the parking lot were going to be saved, it had to be now, and we started filing out of the trees to collect them and bring them to the street, where a small faction of Blackhawks were still sitting on their bikes, watching the clubhouse burn. In the distance, sirens demanded that we beat a hasty retreat.
We would split up, Crusaders and Blackhawks, with barely a word exchanged. But Lip, straddling his bike in the very back of the crowd, nodded at us as we passed. It was enough to tell us that it was over. The truce was on once more. We were free.
Blade led the men back to his house, where they’d try to make sense of the future and mourn the broken past, and take care of the wounded. We had a doctor who’d come and do any work we needed him to, without asking questions.
Porky had been shot in the thigh, and Boon ended up taking one in the shoulder. Mack had a hole clear through his hip. Freight, a man who rarely spoke and never complained, had an elbow blown out, but no one knew it until he asked someone to give him a ride. Otherwise, we were blessedly unharmed, outside of some grazing scrapes and cuts. Except for Grinder, of course, who still lay in the blast zone, the air too hot to rescue his body now.
I dropped Freight off at Blade’s, but I didn’t stay. I went straight for the forest. I went straight for Bex. My father’s death was heavy in my heart, throbbing. I craved the comfort of my brothers, and the wisdom of men who’d known my father better than I ever would. But not as much as I craved her, riding behind me, her hands clasped around my chest, safe and sound and all mine.
Bex
“I killed her.”
Cross stood there, staring down at Sylvia’s body. The minute I heard his bike approaching, I jumped for the door. Before that, I’d mostly been sitting on the couch and staring into space. When he crossed the threshold, I leapt into his arms, feeling something for the first time since Sylvia drew her last breath. He lifted me like a feather, squeezing me tight, kissing my temple twice before letting me back down on my feet.
“Holy shit,” Cross hissed, looking over my shoulder, seeing the body for the first time. “What the hell happened?”
In case you couldn’t guess, I’d never killed anyone before.
Self-defense or not, I was feeling a bit uneasy about it.
“Right after y’all left, she…and she had a gun so…I had to…”
I gestured to the body, trying to get him to understand without having to say the words again. He got the picture alright.
“Did you win?” I asked, suddenly realizing that there were bigger issues than just Sylvia’s dead body.
“Win?” Cross looked confused for a minute. Then he realized what he meant. “Oh. Yeah, baby. Maybe not in so many words. Doesn’t feel like winnin’, to me, you know. But yeah. We won.”
I was silent for a while, considering this.
“I won, too,” I said. A smile threatened the corners of my lips. I didn’t know whether or not to let it out. If I was happy about that dead body, what did it mean? What did it mean about who I was, if I could smile over someone I’d killed?
“You sure did, baby,” Cross said, stepping towards me and pulling me into his arms. “You won. Right proud of you.”
“Yeah?” I was torn between crying and laughing. “Is this how it’s supposed to feel, Cross?”
He pulled back, looked me in the eye. I didn’t know how to tell him how it felt, because I didn’t rightly know how it felt. It just felt...
“Yeah, freckles,” he said. I guess I didn’t need to tell him. I guess he saw it. “That’s how it’s supposed to feel. Not too good. But not too bad, if you do it for the right reasons.”
Did I hear a lie on his lips? Did I want to hear a lie on his lips? I buried my face into his cut, grabbing the edges and pulling him like I wanted to crawl into the safety of his chest.
“My father,” Cross suddenly said. I felt his chin moving against my scalp. My spine stiffened. I hadn’t even asked if everyone was okay. Grinder…
“No,” I moaned, pulling away, trying to get his eyes to meet mine. “Baby, no. Are you saying…”
“Just…let me take you home, Bex,” he said, confirming my question by not answering it at all. “I need to take you home, alright?
“Wait,” I said, hating what I was about to do. But I knew I had to do it. Cross had to know.
I went and retrieved the prospect’s cut from where Sylvia had thrown it on the floor. Bringing it back, I saw Cross’ body go limp the moment he saw it.
“The kid…” I started to say.
“Hunter,” he finished, reaching out for the leather. I gave it over. “I guess they didn’t leave us a body to bury.”
I shook my head, tea
rs welling in my eyes while I watched Cross hold a dead boy’s cut.
“The river, I guess,” I managed to say. He didn’t look at me, but he nodded, and he opened his arm out, inviting me in. I went to his side and let him bury his nose in my hair, his lips meeting my scalp.
“Let’s go,” he said, and started towards the door. He stopped mid-step, looked up the stairs, and told me to wait at his Vincent. He forgot something. I didn’t wonder what it was. I didn’t care. I had too much shit to care about already. No room for anything more. And a minute later, he was back, and I had my arms around him, and we were leaving the cabin behind. Someone would come and take care of Sylvia’s body. Someone would come and clean up after us all. But I’d never go back there. Never in a million years.
We went straight to Cross’ apartment, and then straight to bed. But for once, we weren’t all hands grabbing at each other, undressing and entering and thrusting and coming. Cross left me long enough to brush his teeth, then was back at my side, just lying there, holding me, half-dressed. My fingers traced the ink decorating his chest and arms, lingering on the newest ones, the ones I couldn’t tell the story of.
I wanted to be able to tell each and every story.
So I asked him to tell me.
And it helped. Lying there, he talked for hours, telling me about the shark with two dicks and the flowers from Alberta and the typewriter from The Shining and the pin-up girl straddling the devil’s tongue. I even got him to laugh here and there, and had a few moments of my own. We fell asleep when the sun was about to touch the sky, and slept straight until the sun set. And then we didn’t have time to heal; there was work to do. Enough work to keep us distracted until the wounds healed on their own.
Bex
I stood at Cross’ side, holding his hand, on a day that held the first nibble of autumn’s bite. The summer was almost over. I was warm enough in my new jacket, stitched up with Property of Cross on the back. One of the first things to change, in those days after Dutch took flight, was my status. I graduated from his woman to his old lady. It was a good time for it, too. He needed me, then.
We watched the coffin lowering into the ground. Grinder’s body hadn’t been fit to display, and we didn’t have Hunter’s body at all. I don’t know if the funeral director at Gordon & Sons knew what he was getting into when we walked in to make the arrangements, but it was the sort of funeral that Grinder would have loved. Hunter, too, probably, though I didn’t know him as well as Cross and the boys did.
The day we buried them both – Grinder literally and Hunter in spirit – the elegant, paisley-carpeted funeral home was full of hooting, hollering, strong drinks and curse words. A rebel’s burial if there ever was one. The boys might not be headed to heaven, but we made sure to raise hell. We rode in a procession to the graveyard, and baffled the preacher with our laughter, story after story after story honoring the man in the coffin and the boy at the bottom of the river.
Even some of the Blackhawks came to pay their respects. Lip and his men didn’t stay long, but they were there, which meant a whole hell of a lot. The truce was back on, though it had taken a healthy chunk of the Crusader’s profits for the years. Money couldn’t repay shed blood, but in the criminal world, it was close enough. Paying off the Blackhawks assured us all of a more peaceful future. Just as long as Blade, the new President, didn’t go crazy enough to follow in Dutch’s footsteps. And with Cross acting as his Vice President, keeping him in check, I was pretty sure that wouldn’t happen.
Now, most of the Crusaders had gone back to Blade’s house, since the clubhouse was still devastated. Re-construction would start soon, but that would take time, too. The party would keep on going, long into the night. Grinder’s name, and Hunter’s, would go on the wall of honored dead, one of the few parts of the clubhouse that survived the fire. Their cuts would go to the next of kin – in Grinder’s case, that was Cross, who elected to bury his old man in his colors.
Cross and I lingered awhile at the grave, watching the gravediggers work, saying our goodbyes. Cross squeezed my hand and turned to me, kissing my temple, telling me it was time to go without having to say a word.
The next day, after a party fit to raise the recently dead, I woke up to Cross’ snoring. He only snored like that when he was properly drunk, and it would have been funny if it hadn’t been annoying – I wasn’t feeling bright-eyed and bushy-tailed myself, and could have used a few more hours sleep. But it wasn’t my father with fresh dirt on his grave, so I made my peace with being awake and went to start coffee.
Cross slept through the morning and into the afternoon. By 2pm, I was antsy to do something besides drink coffee and wait for him to wake up. I’d gone through most of the books on his shelves already, and his television only got three channels. The apartment was coming close to getting messy, so I decided to do something about it.
The worst thing about living with Cross, by far, was the fact that he didn’t seem to understand the purpose of a laundry basket. He would walk through the door and start stripping off his clothes, leaving a trail of jeans and shirts from the front door to the bathroom. Clean or dirty, it didn’t matter, it ended up on the floor. Hell, sometimes he’d be standing in the bedroom, right next to the goddamn hamper, and throw his dirty t-shirt on the floor. I’d watched him do it so many times that I didn’t even bother trying to stop him anymore.
So I started at the door, gathering t-shirts and undershirts and the occasional sock or boxer, winding my way down the hall to the bedroom. Once there, I tip-toed around the room, trying as hard as I could not to make too much noise. Tossing my handful of clothes into the hamper, I started on clearing the bedroom floor.
I was picking up one of his three pairs of jeans when I heard it. The rattle. The rattle I knew all too well. For a second, I was suspended in confusion. That was a sound I related, mostly, to my childhood. And then my marriage. But it was a sound that could mean anything, really. Reaching into the pocket of his jeans, I told myself it was aspirin.
I even tried to convince myself that it was something else as I turned the orange bottle around in my hand, looking for the label. Vicodin.
My heart stopped beating for a full pulse. I dropped the bottle to the floor, my lip quivering. No. He wouldn’t do that to me. He wouldn’t do that to himself. He wouldn’t do that to us.
“Cross,” I heard my own voice say, not looking at his sleeping form. I heard him turn over, but he didn’t respond. So I said his name louder. “Cross!”
“Wha’! Shit, what! Oh…fuck, baby, my head,” Cross came awake with a shout and a groan. I still couldn’t turn to look at him, my eyes completely transfixed on the fallen bottle. “What time is…”
“Where’d you get them,” I said, my voice surprisingly steady.
“What? Get what? Baby, wh…”
“The pills, Cross,” I said, finally forcing myself to look at him. He was barely sitting up in the bed, blinking slowly, his face still. “Where’d they come from?”
He took a quick inhale, and I could read his face perfectly. He was considering whether or not to lie. Because that’s what addicts do. They lie.
“Don’t you fucking dare lie to me,” I spat. His eyes darkened. He was getting mad. I didn’t care.
“My father died,” he said. “I watched my father die, Bex.”
“And you thought those would help?” I pointed to the bottle, my stomach turning over and over again. “What were you thinking, Cross? You thought you would just take them once or twice? Is that what you thought? How long, Cross? How long have you been getting stoned, lying to me?”
“Get off my fuckin’ back, Bex,” he roared. Hungover, probably wanting a fix. Angry. I shook my head slowly, trying to find my man in his eyes and failing.
“You know what that shit has taken from me,” I said softly. “Mama. My husband.”
“Your husband, Bex? You tryin’ to tell me you still…”
I put my hand up to stop him. He was trying to turn this on me.
I wasn’t going to let him. I was done letting drugs walk all over me. Because it wasn’t the people who did it; it was the drugs. You know what they say about dancing with the bear? Once you start, you don’t stop until the bear lets you stop.
“Don’t you dare,” I said. “Don’t you fucking dare, Cross.”
“Jesus, Bex, you’re overreacting. It was a couple of pills. Just to take the edge off. Just to…”
“It’s never just a couple pills, Cross,” I said, my anger bleeding into sadness. Because he wouldn’t understand. Right now, he couldn’t understand. He was with the bear, now. “I…I can’t be here.”
“Bex,” he said, now rising from the bed and trying to make it to me before I walked away. I knew that once he grabbed me, got his hands on me, I wouldn’t have the strength to walk away. Cross was my drug. He was my bear. And no one was going to stage an intervention. I had to do it myself.
“No,” I said, backing away. “No, Cross. I’m leaving. I can deal with the club. I can deal with being afraid for you. I can deal with a lot of things, Cross. But I won’t deal with that. You can’t make me deal with that. Not again. Never again, Cross.”
He stared at me. I turned around, started walking. Each step, I went a little faster. Each step, I got a little farther away, and the tears came a little closer. By the time the door slammed behind me, I was powerwalking. And once outside, in the open air, I was bawling as I strode, almost jogging, down the block. I didn’t know where I was going. I didn’t have anywhere to go.
This time, I noticed him. Or, at least, I noticed the car, and the way it was driving slowly beside me. But I didn’t have room in my mind to wonder about it. I was too busy praying that Cross wouldn’t follow me, that he wouldn’t come running up behind me and grabbing me the way he always did and…
